2K Sports dropped its first three screenshots of NBA 2K13 today but the real big news comes in this video: There's a change in the control scheme.

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While NBA 2K's control set has long provided for a wide array of authentic steps, moves and shooting motions, the complexities in their execution were very difficult for all but game's year-in-and-year out core. It sounds like the Visual Concepts team sought to address that by putting ballhandler moves on the right stick (with his regular movement direction on the left) in order to give the player a more organic way to spin around a defender or juke his man.

Because the right stick was for shooting in past versions of NBA 2K, ballhandler moves required a left trigger modifier followed by a gesture on the left stick. Now it sounds like the right stick is more of an all-purpose "Control Stick," covering both ballhandler moves and shooting. In a preview published this morning by Polygon, Visual Concepts says it has yet to make a final decision but is leaning against including legacy control systems in this game. [Update:] Polygon has clarified its report to say that NBA 2K13 will not, in fact, have older control systems as an option.

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The rest of the video describes changes in the game's defensive gameplay, incorporating things like better momentum to make on-the-ball defense a more realistic interaction for defender and ballhandler alike.

The screens? Well, as usual, Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose and Blake Griffin all look great and well modeled. The level of detail in the Rose shot is especially impressive, too.